| What happened to Tocqueville’s America?
Whitman, James Q.
Social Research, Summer 2007, v74, #2, pp251-270
Pointing to the “exceptional punitiveness of American law as of the year 2007,” and the “extraordinarily high incarceration rates” the author suggests that “[t]he harshness of American punishment has to do with certain distinctive traditions in American culture. In particular, [the] harshness has to do with certain distinctive traditions in American democratic culture: the unsettling truth upon which [he] will dwell is that American harshness has to do, to a large extent, with the very strength of 'Democracy in America' that entranced Tocqueville 175 years ago.” James Q. Whitman is Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale University.
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C29/07-07. Posted January 10, 2008
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